“Short Memory/No History”
Short Memory/ No History ( A Case of Cultural Amnesia)
A multi-tiered conceptual work of variable media that attempts to deal with the memory and continuing deviations of the AIDS crisis from a personal and archival mode.
Principal Credits:
SM/NH Project Installation & Components are conceived, produced, and directed by Peter Cramer and Jack Waters With photographs by Peter Cramer, and original essays by Jack Waters
The work is delivered by modular variable media:
Short Memory /No History: A Case of Cultural Amnesia, is a multimedia installation that encases the other elements. The Installation incorporates electronic media, publication, photography, original essay material and live art with the artists functioning as performative guides to the material into a facsimile of a personal living space. When not occupying the space the installation functions as an archive where the placement of artifacts may evoke the feeling of being in a modern crypt. A multimedia essay deliverable as a CD/DVD ROM, and a documentary video exist as components whose source material are the primary content of the visual work. They also each exist on their own as independent, stand-alone works. The items and imagery contained both as the physical ephemera of the installation, and in the overlapping content of the media represent memory fragments of the past, experience of the present, and the anticipation of the future. The installation is a habitat – an environment encapsulating a lived history of the AIDS epidemic by the encasement of the materials in the list of ephemera. The digital work and Documentary Video connect AIDS activism to the development of a broader queer activism, which in turn ushered the GLBTG demoraphic into mainstream forums of media and commerce.
PARTIAL LIST OF INSTALLATION EPHEMERA:
Wall Partitions: plastic sheets, photographs, slide projections, video projection, clock
Desk: Notepads, Pens, Pencils, Computer, CD ROM
Bed: Transistor TV Night Tables: pharmaceutical containers
Artifacts: cassette player, magazines, books, fliers, posters, stickers , clothing , suitcase
Dressing table: wigs, makeup, hair supplies, combs, brushes and personal effects.
DOCUMENTARY VIDEOTAPE:
Tilted, “Short Memory /No History: AIDS ART ACTIVISM” is a 33 minute work created to screen concurrent to and independent of the installation.
The video features interviews with activists:
Sandra Elgear (Testing The Limits Video Collective), Sarah Schulman (Novelist, Playwright,co-founder MIX festival), Esther Kaplan (Cheap Art Collective, POZ Magazine), Robert Pacheco Vazquez (Gran Fury, Audrey Lorde Project).
DIGITAL COMPONENT :
is stored as a computer file, viewable on a screen sitting on a table that simulates the workspace of the artists’ habitat. The content is comprised of publication samples from Outweek,NYQ, QW, LGNY, NYBlade News,Pussygrazer, My Comrade/Sister and various sources. with original essays written by Jack Waters. It is distributable as a CD/DV Rom and on similar multimedia formats.
EXHIBITION HISTORY:
The installation with all its components was originally presented at Shedhalle in Zurich, Switzerland in 2000 in a group exhibition titled “The Color Of Friendship” curated by Elke Aus Dem Moore. Subsequent variations were exhibited in an installation titled, “Vital Signs” at the artist space DUMBA in Brooklyn, NY in 2001; at The Centro De Cultura Contemporánea De Barcelona (CCCB) in 2005, MIX NYC (2006) and at BAAD (Bronx Academy Of Art and Dance) in 2009. The documentary videotape has been screened internationally, notably at L.A’s OUTFEST. The video is distributed by the Film Makers’s Cooperative in New York City.
